Day of Wrath

As one of the Special Forces’ top nuclear weapons experts, Avery had briefed Thorn and other Delta Force officers on bomb types, security measures, and effects several times. He remembered the former Green Beret’s absolute precision his almost manic attention to detail. Hell, the man had practically charted his own blood/alcohol ratio over drinks at the Fort Bragg Sport Parachute Club. Why would Avery circle a weapon’s serial number after he’d already checked it off?

Thorn leafed through the second logbook and stopped on the same page.

Again, all the bomb codes were checked off. But none of them were circled. He silently showed it to Helen.

She shook her head in confusion. “What does it mean, Peter?”

“I’m damned if I know, but I’d sure like to find out—”

“Special Agent Gray? Colonel Thorn? I think you need to see this. Immediately!”

Alexei Koniev’s voice broke their concentration.

He sounded strained.

They turned around. The Russian major was on the far side of the tent they’d been assigned as a work space. He’d been going through the larger pieces of luggage recovered so far. Now he stood staring down into an open suitcase.

When they joined him, they could see that Koniev was looking at two clear plastic bags nestled carefully among folded clothes.

Both were full of a white, granular powder. He pulled out a penknife and made a small incision at the top of one of the bags.

The MVD major silently offered the bag he’d sliced open to Helen. She dabbed one finger in the powder and studied it closely.

Her face wrinkled. “Christ, Alexei! I think that’s pure heroin!”

Koniev nodded slowly. “Yes, I think so, too.”

Thorn looked down at the bags and then back up at the Russian policeman. “How much is this stuff worth?”

“Two kilos of heroin? On the street?” Koniev grimaced. “Perhaps six billion rubles. Roughly one million of your American dollars.”

“Whose suitcase is that?” Helen demanded.

Koniev looked as though he’d swallowed poison. “Colonel Anatoly Gasparov,” he said reluctantly. “The chief Russian liaison officer to your O.S.I.A inspection team.”

Helen Gray looked up at Thorn, worry written all over her face. “What do you think, Peter?”

He frowned. “I think our lives just got a whole lot more complicated.”’

CHAPTER THREE IN TRANSIT

MAY 28

_{Pechenga, Northern Coast of the Kola Peninsula, Russia (D MINUS 24)}

Rolf Ulrich Reichardt glanced out a dirty window toward the harbor below. Pechenga, he thought smugly again, was perfect for his purposes.

Located twenty kilometers from the Norwegian border, the dreary little town lay huddled between inhospitable frozen tundra and the frigid Barents Sea. Its only asset was the sheltered harbor built for Soviet Army units and amphibious ships based there during the Cold War. When the U.S.S.R. collapsed, the soldiers left and the ships were either scrapped or left to rot at the, pier. Now the town’s few thousand inhabitants struggled to survive on coastal trade and a meager fishing industry.

With so little activity to distract Pechenga’s harbormaster, Reichardt had his full attention as well as the only other chair in the dingy office overlooking the bay. The German lounged casually in the stiff-backed chair, making himself as comfortable as possible in the squalid circumstances. He had left behind his expensive suits and dressed instead in gray slacks and a navy pullover with a black leather jacket to protect him from the chilly winds that always blew off the Barents.

He checked his watch, a Rolex. Expensive, perhaps, but admirably precise. It was also a name people associated with wealth, and power, and success. So much so that many of those Reichardt dealt with saw only the watch — and never the man.

And that was useful.

Reichardt tugged his sleeve back over the watch. There was still ample time to begin work. With luck, the ship he was here to see loaded would be underway by nightfall — by dinner, he corrected himself. So near the summer solstice and so far north, the sun would not set until almost 11:00 P.M. He glanced out the window again.

Star of the White Sea was a small, bulk freighter, sound in hull and engine, though she’d never win any beauty contests. Her dark gray hull had once been topped by a crisp blue-and white superstructure, but the paint had long ago succumbed to irregular patches of almost leprous rust and grime. A few men milled about on deck, while others, mostly Reichardt’s own security force, waited on the pier. The only other vessels in sight were a few fishing boats and an international environmental survey ship.

A muffled cough brought his attention back inside the cramped office.

The harbormaster, a stooped, elderly man named Cherga, was still leafing through Reichardt’s papers with evident interest.